Frankenstein found such an undertaking easy to give. It was clear there was no point or hope for him in the sacrament. He was past saving and wouldn’t go seeking reminders.
Right now and as usual, Foxglove served as Ada’s amen-corner and representative on earth when she was absent. He had his wooden leg unstrapped beside him and was resting his stump up on a stool, massaging its sore end.
‘Leave her be, sir, I should,’ he said. ‘Madam is engaged in important business.’
‘And this isn’t?’ Julius waggled the letter back and forth, more amused than annoyed. ‘Wild ravings against us from the greatest power in Europe, maybe even the world, and it’s not important?’
‘Not as important, sir,’ said Foxglove. ‘And if I may be permitted an observation; as I heard it read to me, the threats are against you, not us…’
Lady Lovelace didn’t deign to look up from her occupation, but took time to silently signal that a good point had been made.
Frankenstein checked the script and saw it was so.
‘True, very true,’ he conceded. ‘However, I suspect, Foxglove, that if Imperial vengeance catches up with us—or, as you correctly note, me—it will arrive as more of a bludgeon than a rapier. Indeed, I have every confidence it will err on the generous side and take in all manner of bit-players…’
Again, Ada indicated she was following the conversation and in agreement.
This was developing into a debate of rare intellectual honesty, for Foxglove accepted with a smile that Julius was right.
‘Mebbe so, sir, but all things duly considered, when you look at matters in the round, what more can they do to us they haven’t done already?’
He was looking at where his lower leg used to be, a zone that still troubled him with phantom itches and genuine sorrow.
That sacrifice had been demanded as soon as they sailed out of Trieste. When Julius despaired of repairing the sniper’s work he demanded the limb as the inescapable price for Foxglove’s survival. The case was too urgent to await dry land and a steady operating table. The ship’s surgeon concurred. However, even with that weight of professional advice, the ashen servant had looked to Ada for guidance.
She’d shrugged and said the decision was his alone. Julius didn’t wait for it and picked up the savage-toothed amputation saw.
Lady Lovelace held Foxglove down throughout and succeeded unaided in that. In other circumstances maybe three or four burly matelots might have been required.
The leg was dumped overboard, in the way of such things, and the last anyone saw of it was as a floating speck caught up in the tide taking them all into Venice.
Then Ada had seen fit to quip that Foxglove would probably be the first of them to set foot in Italy. And wasn’t it a pity he wouldn’t be attached to it at the time?
If ever the bond of mistress-servant loyalty was going to snap Frankenstein assumed it would be then. But no, through his fever Foxglove mustered a smile. And perhaps distraction from the poor man’s woes had been Ada’s intention in saying such a crass thing. Perhaps.
The ambush in Trieste had been fitting culmination to their flight across the continent. They’d been harried all the way, constantly on the verge of capture and sensing the questing feelers of secret services night and day. The lavish bribes they paid out to buy co-operation and silence also attracted attention at the same time, and so depleted their wealth that they arrived at the Adriatic as near paupers. They even looked the part for, en route, they’d slept under hedges as often as in beds. Their faces bore the sleepless, haunted, look that comes from too many moonlight flits and bad meals taken on the move. They now jumped at every hoof-fall, expecting the arrival of cavalry.
Traversing a world at war meant there was no shortage of soldiery passing by to give them palpitations. In some parts they were likely to be French, in others not; but the borders between the two were in constant flux. And even where there was no military, in those few regions at fragile peace or too devastated to be worth occupying, the spies and agents of the Powers were present, looking out to buy and sell people.
Trieste had been the closest shave of all. Unbeknownst to them, though much suspected, they were under observation from their arrival. As Ada and Julius subsequently reconstructed it, reinforcements must have been speeding there, probably complete with cages and implements-of-interrogation, to secure a live prize. However, when the fugitives made moves towards a ship all plans were off and their would-be captors acted with whatever came to hand.
A shot had rung out on the dockside. Foxglove slid to the ground, his face merely puzzled by withdrawal of support from a leg that till then had given a lifetime of loyal service. Simultaneously, from behind them came a cacophony of voices, some French, others fluent ‘international abuse,’ as men sped into the street heading in their direction.
So it came about that Frankenstein and co. took not the ship they’d intended to but the first to hand and ready to sail. Lady Lovelace dealt with ensuring its captain saw things their way whilst Julius got Foxglove below deck and examined the damage. Down there he heard Gallic curses beyond the hull but they stayed on the quayside, not drawing any nearer. Then as the ship got underway the external rage and menaces gradually receded into oblivion.
But it was a close run thing. Only a happy chance had directed their feet to an Austrian-flagged armed-merchantman. It had crew enough aboard to deter unwelcome visitors and a inbred inclination to refuse any French proposal, let alone threat. As such, it was their first stroke of luck in ages.
That it was going just along the coast to Venice initially seemed disappointing, but sober reflection turned the news into great good fortune. Those who’d waved farewell with obscene gestures from the dock would assume a longer voyage in prospect, probably far to the south, aiming to put maximum distance between chasers and chased.
Better still, the Venetian experience under Napoleonic occupation back when he rampaged round Europe the first time, hadn’t exactly warmed them to Revolutionary France or its successor ‘Convention.’ For did not the French snuff out the thousand year old ‘Serene Republic’ like it counted for nothing? Didn’t they then loot the place? True or not (true), that was how the present nostalgic Venetian regime saw things, and perception is all that matters in human affairs. The Doge and his Council famously felt very far from ‘serene’ about recent history and so, all other things being equal, would look with favour, or at least with a blind eye, on these fleeing France. It was even said some French royalists and anti-Revivalists, the most friendless and despised of all exiles, had found asylum there.
Julius and friends never discovered whether that was correct. It was enough—more than—that they found sanctuary. Sort of. Their brief stay in Venice was confined to damp cellars and movement by night. Even the medicine for Foxglove had to be fetched in covertly under cover of darkness. Of what remained of the City’s fine art and architectural delights they saw nothing. And for some strange reason Lady Lovelace bitterly resented that. At loud length.
Then, when Foxglove’s sweating-crisis was finally over and he looked likely to survive, the trio had set off for Rome. Increasingly of late, ‘the Eternal City’ had flared in Frankenstein’s memory as a beckoning refuge, a place when French writ didn’t run and their ideology was rejected. He knew Rome, he’d lived there as a child and (both clincher and sad truth, this) who else would have them? Where else could they go? The Falklands, perhaps, and its windswept, man-free, islands? Or fabled ‘New Zealand’—and risk being eaten by tattooed savages? Anywhere else they would be known and face ‘welcome.’